Much excitement this afternoon as we are visited by beings from on high.
Three viaggi of the helicopter, bringing firewood for neighbours intending to spend the next two months here.
We hear the sound of the rotors from a distance. AJ looks at me, I look at AJ. I sweep B up and we belt up two flights to the attic...Here, with our noses pressed against the window, the helicopter, today red with a yellow streak, is about ten feet away. B is standing on tippy-toe, grasping the window sill, her eyes big. AJ is flat against the wall, straining to see the action while still feeling relatively safe.
Later, AJ relates in a mixture of German, Italian and English the visit of the helicopter. He must be excited to mix his languages so!
He's seen so many helicopter flights, up close and exhilirating, that you'd think he wouldn't turn a hair. In the past few years three roofs have been refurbished, requiring numerous flights with pallets of granite piode (roofing stones), ten-feet-long pine beams, cement, sand, cement mixers, scaffolding, you name it, all dangling perilously from the end of a long rope.
Today's mission was fairly simple. A bag of chopped wood deposited in a garden. No electricity cables, no narrow spaces. But I've seen pallets of piode deposited on scaffolding three feet wide, beams ditto, and other loads four or five feet wide placed gently down in a street that's only six feet wide. The best pilot I've seen was a young woman who was able to deposit six pallets in neat piles on a terrace only a foot larger than themselves with plant pots on the wall, and flying dashingly away without doing any damage whatsoever.
Why do we need a helicopter delivery? See October 2007 Una Piccola Complicazione.
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